


Walking Wounded

by Lucky107



Series: The Seventh Born [11]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mind Manipulation, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-28
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 21:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14777424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: It’s impossible to tell where the Bliss ends and reality begins beyond the Gate.





	Walking Wounded

It’s impossible to tell where the Bliss ends and reality begins beyond the Gate.

Small trees and sparkling white moon flowers mask every sheet of cold steel and actively humming machinery just beneath the surface. Thick, impenetrable fog pours from the ventilation system like small waterfalls and it draws Roberta into the labyrinth with the sweet allure of it’s ethereal beauty.

_The Garden of Eden_.

Groping blindly with all the grace of an angel, the deputy stumbles like a child lost in the darkness of a fun-house on Hallows’ Eve—but this isn’t a cheap thrill at O'Hara’s.

This is the disintegration of her own mind.

The real Roberta Caine is fading.

_Wake up, Roberta_ —

The voice is not her own, coming instead as a distant echo from somewhere deep within the bunker.

But the further she allows herself to be led into the mist, the more she begins to lose sight of herself, of her _purpose_. That purpose is to rescue Sheriff Whitehorse and yet the urgency of that purpose is lost to the Bliss.

There’s a bright flash of white light then and a loud _bang_.

A heavy thump echoes around her and ahead Cameron Burke’s body falls like a rag doll against a podium.

Roberta freezes.

Even though he’s dead, she can feel his eyes staring back at her just as they had in that moment before he pulled the trigger: sober and afraid. When he looked at her with that gun in his hand, he was _awake_.

_Alive_ —

_Wake up, Roberta_ —

The voice, she realises, belongs to the marshal.

Blind, Roberta begins to run. She runs into the mist and she doesn’t stop until she catches up to that voice, where she discovers Cameron standing amid the lush foliage. He looks serene. A smile traces his thin lips and his dark eyes are alight with the same kindness she had allowed herself to fall in love with.

He reaches out his hand to her, just the way he had prior to taking the leap, _waiting_ , but there are no butterflies this time.

_Remember what your sheriff said_ —

Roberta takes a single step forward, an unasked question still on her lips when the apparition vanishes into a cloud of green smoke, little more than a trick of the Bliss.

But in his place stands a staircase, covered in thick ivy and almost completely invisible to the naked eye.

That’s when she first hears it.

_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me_ …

This time the voice is particularly clear in spite of the heavy fog— _close_ —and it echoes back on her ears with a distinct familiarity.

It’s Earl Whitehorse.

_Your sheriff_ —

Roberta climbs the stairs in such haste that she thinks she twists her ankle in the process, but she doesn’t stop to check. She moves with a mechanical desperation as she chases after the sound of the sheriff’s voice, allowing herself to be led deeper into the Bliss.

It doesn’t take her long to locate him, peering out at her from behind a set of steel bars. His face is weathered and old, eyes hollow and completely strange.

But the eyes staring back at her harbor the same sobering fear as Cameron’s had right before he pulled the trigger.

Earl’s on the verge of collapse.

“I don’t have much time, Roberta,” he pleads with her in an aged rasp, wrapping his weak hands around the cold steel. Roberta blankets her hands over his. She’s trembling, but he’s worse. “The Bliss. You have to stop it. You have to _hurry_.”

It’s only once he slips away from her— _I once was lost, but now I’m found_ —and walks back into the cell that Roberta notices the noose hanging inside. Earl methodically steps up onto the awaiting chair. His eyes, with their white irises, are blind.

When their eyes meet through the noose it’s no longer the sheriff standing in that cell at all.

It’s her father.

Roberta wakes up back in the family barn, an overturned chair lying at her father’s feet as urine runs down his leg in a steady _drip_ , _drip_ , _drip_. The body is still swinging, her mind tells her as the events replay before her eyes, but the coroner’s report said that it was impossible.

He’d already been dead for half a day.

_Half a day_.

And _nobody_ noticed.

The thought alone is enough to force Roberta to her knees amid the lush green grass and moon flowers, holding onto the bars in her effort not to collapse into the fetal position and cry. Her blank eyes stare up at him, but she doesn’t see the sheriff in peril.

This deep into the Bliss she processes little more than the damp summer humidity that clung to her skin and the tickle of the dry straw against her bare knees on that hot August afternoon.

She’s already too late— _seconds too late_.

_Wake up, Roberta_ —

The echo of Earl’s voice from that tragic day cuts through the fog like a knife and Roberta lifts her head.

_Remember what your sheriff said_ —

“ _Don’t believe the Bliss_.”

When their eyes meet, Roberta sees clearly for the first time in days: Earl Whitehorse is _fighting_. He’s determined not to become another pawn in Faith’s wicked little game, refuses to let her have _that_ after taking Virgil Minkler and Cameron Burke.

On the day Roberta’s father killed himself Earl made her one promise: that she would never be alone.

Earl believes in that promise with every fiber of his being.

It gives him _strength_.

“Go - _now_ ,” his voice rings out, this time crystal clear. “Before it’s too late—”

_Alive_ —

Roberta piggybacks off of his strength and finds her feet, using each rung of the cold bars like a ladder to combat the overwhelming weight of her fatality that’s draped like a blanket across her shoulders.

It’s painful—she doesn’t want to fight, to _live_ anymore.

But she _must_.

For Earl.


End file.
